She spent the first half of her adult life as a Catholic nun, and is notable for the memoir she wrote after leaving her enclosed religious order.
[3][4] Baldwin joined an enclosed religious order of Augustinian canonesses in 1914, a few months before the beginning of World War I.
"[5] After 28 years of consecrated life there as a canoness regular, she made the decision to leave, and requested dispensation from her religious vows, which was granted by the Vatican.
In 1938, she transferred to St Monica's Priory, then at Rawdon House in Hoddeson, Hertfordshire, and it was from there that she was released from her vows in October 1941.
Her novel, The Called and the Chosen, written as the diary of Sister Ursula Auberon, an enclosed nun at the Abbaye de la Sainte Croix, Framleghen, was published in 1957 by Farrar, Straus & Cudahy.